When the World Falls to Pieces
by Firelily10
Summary: In the bomb shelters of District 13, Katniss finds comfort in the last person she expected to get it from, but can she forgive him after everything he's done? Promises have already been broken, but she can't help but wonder: Is there more to Haymitch Abernathy than she thinks? And can she ever dare to trust her mentor again? One-shot; Mockingjay


**Disclaimer: All rights go to Suzanne Collins for storyline, characters, locations, etc. I do not own anything**.

**So this is my first HG fanfic (actually it's the first fanfic I've written in years). I recently went to see Mockingjay Part 1 in the cinemas and it rekindled my spark for the series, inspiring me to write this. **

**The one-shot takes place during Mockingjay in District 13 while the Capitol is bombing them following Peeta's warning. The citizens have just been evacuated to the bunker. All from the POV of Katniss, in case that isn't obvious later on.**

**Enjoy and don't forget to leave reviews!**

The whole earth shakes around me, sending bits of concrete and graphite the size of breadcrumbs flying downwards to assault the horde of humans below. We sit huddled in the dark like frightened animals, trembling each time an unexpected speck of cement pecks our heads. Some of us moan, some whimper, and others sit quietly, listening to the muffled sounds of explosions breaking out far above us.

Here in the bunker of District 13, it is cold and damp. It's different from the stormy winter nights back in 12. There it was only cold, made bearable with the help of a threadbare blanket and the warmth of my sister's tiny body curled into mine. Down here even Prim's fragile form pressed against my side does nothing to thaw the ice seeping into my bones.

A child whimpers in the bunk next to ours. I try to banish the sound from my mind.

I focus on a crack in the ceiling directly above me, which spreads inch by inch with every ground shaking blow from above. I watch the lines spread in a spiderweb-like pattern across the ceiling, reminding me of glass on the verge of shattering. For a moment I fear that the whole thing will collapse on top of us and I grip Prim's wrist tightly but the concrete holds for yet another minute.

The cries of the child in the neighboring bunk turn into screams, and all I can hear is Rue. My fingers reach out to find a sleeping Prim next to me for reassurance. She is still here. Rue is gone but she is still there. My little angel, my little Primrose.

The soothing warmth of her touch is enough to calm my nerves for a few moments, and against the warning bubbling in my gut, I close my eyes.

XxXxXx

BOOM! I jerk awake and bolt upright.

The first thing my senses manage to register are the screams. They surround me, suffocate me, ripping the very air from my lungs. All other sounds are drowned out in their roar, and I feel panic rising in my tightening chest.

Something crashes to my left. I do not hear it, but I feel the sudden rippling movement of previously unmoving air whip my hair back and our bunk begins tipping over. Instinct kicks in and I yank Prim into my arms and we roll over the side of the bunk, landing hard on our backs. I hear the crunch of bones breaking though I'm not sure if they're mine or Prim's. This does not concern me at the moment. Lying on my back, I am now forced to look upwards and I see it.

The grain sized fragments of cement have evolved to enormous chunks, and the thin cracks have grown into canyons. The ceiling seems to disintegrate in slow motion before my eyes. It is only when dust from the crumbling debris blows in like a desert storm, blinding me and settling like sand in my lungs, that I regain control over my body and feel the urge to move.

I shout something like Prim's name and pull her to her feet, push her in front of me, and run. I dare not look behind me. Somehow I still hear Prim screaming for my mother, for me, and (this does not surprise me) for her stupid cat. I yell something at her but I can't make out my own words.

The shock wave behind me bites my heels and I barely feel my fingers close around my sister's thin wrist before we are blown foreword into oblivion.

XxXxXx

Darkness. Nothing but darkness. I am dead. Prim is dead. I've failed us both.

No, wait. I begin to make out shapes in the darkness. At first I think they're boulders and perhaps we're in some kind of cave, but I recognize the giant pieces of concrete that once made up the bunker. I wonder why I am still here. I had expected my body to be crushed into fine powder, made one with the earth, but I know it's somehow still here because I begin to get the feeling back in my fingertips. I sense something cold and wet gripping onto my hand. I see now that it's a child's hand.

"PRIM!"

I can't see the rest of her, only her hand sticking out from a fault in between two masses of rock. I scream for her again and that's when I see them. Blue eyes stare at me from the void that fills the ever widening crack. They seem to glow almost, and there's something fiery dancing in them. I know then that these are not Prim's eyes. Her eyes are soft, filled with compassion and love, but these are burning with something much darker than anger, an ancient hatred summoned from the depths of the earth.

I hear her voice whisper to me. It feels as if she's right next to me.

"Katniss?"

"Prim?" I croak.

"Katniss?" This time it's not Prim.

"Peeta!"

The next words come to me in a low hiss far too sinister to come from either of them.

"Are you coming to the tree?"

Something tightens around my throat. Somewhere Peeta is screaming at me. I cannot make a sound as the Prim-mutt jumps out at me from the crack, her mangled hand still dangling from its mouth.

XxXxXx

I am drenched in sweat when I wake up. My mouth is open, my lungs are on fire, but no scream leaves my cracked lips. My hands search frantically for Prim beneath the sheets until I find her. I feel her chest to search for signs of life. Sure enough, her heart beats steadily within her chest into the palm of my hand. My breathing slightly slows at this discovery, but I'm still shaking.

Not wanting to wake Prim from her slumbers (I have no doubt she dreams of that discolored rodent she calls a cat), I slip as quietly as I can out of bed. My feet touch the frozen ground tentatively, and my legs feel like they will give way at any moment once I have let go of the edge of the bunk. Still shivering, I stumble through two rows of bunks to the far wall and lean into it. I end up curled up on the floor with my back and head against the wall.

I don't know how long I sit there staring blankly into the dark. Maybe I'm staring or maybe my eyes are closed. I don't know anymore, but it doesn't matter because everywhere I look I see those blazing blue orbs staring at me. The Prim-mutt's whisper bounces around in my head like an echo, eliciting more tears from my burning eyes. I will it to stop, I demand silence, but my thoughts have betrayed me. I claw at the part of my scalp just above my ears, clamping my hands down in desperate hopes of blocking her out. But the harder I press down, the louder her voice gets. Hair and fresh blood are lodged under my fingernails as I continue to claw at myself. Something trickles down the sides of my head and seeps into my mouth, leaving a bitter tang burning on my tongue.

I want to scream but I don't want to draw attention to myself. The last thing I need is for Coin to have the healers drag me away again. I remember the bare, stark white medical room with its spotless sheets that reek of death and the one way windows from which they all watch their poor little Mockingjay try to heal her broken wings. The little red spots on my arms marking where their silver needles injected me with morphine have not yet faded from my skin.

I begin to scratch at the spots, wishing they'll reopen. I want to make sure every last drop of the poison they dared to call medicine was out of my system. But it wasn't just the drugs. There was something far more deadly flowing through my veins. Fear. They've filled me with it, tried to drown me in it. I don't know who did it: the Capitol, this godforsaken district, or me, but it doesn't matter. It's there and I want it out.

Get it out. Get all of it out. GET IT OU-

And then just like that, it stops.

Someone's hands firmly grab my wrists and begin to wrap some type of material around them. At first I think it's gauze but I find that it's a poor substitution for bandages, a piece of someone's shirt I think.

I don't struggle when strong arms slip gently beneath my legs and around my torso and lift me up. My head rests against a solid chest which breathes in steady, rising and falling motions.

I find myself disappointed when I feel the arms slowly lower me into a bed and release their hold on me. The thin mattress sinks downwards by my stomach under the weight of my rescuer, and I feel a large, warm hand gently brush strands of hair out of my face. The hand continually runs down the side of my face and through my hair, stroking my head with a touch gentle enough to be Prim's. My ragged breathing starts to even out, and I am no longer shaking. The hand holds my arm and rubs its thumb in a circular motion against my skin. A wave of relief and security rushes over me, and I feel the beginnings of a smile tugging at my lips.

At first I think of my father, then Peeta, but I know neither of them are the lips that lightly press against my forehead. Gale comes to mind, but I cannot find the familiar smell of pinewood and grass that belongs to him.

I want to know.

My eyelids slowly open and my Seam eyes lock onto their own kind. As Seam stares into Seam, I feel resentment begin to boil under my skin. I hate him and I'm about to tell him so, but every cruel word I want to scream at him dies in my throat when I hear the child on the other side of the bunker scream once more.

My body reacts violently. I thrash and kick, tangling myself in the sheets, and this time I know I'm screaming. I can't breathe. I can't see. I can only feel. Feel strong arms pull me up and bring me in close, wrapping around me securely, acting as a barrier between me and the rest of the world. I cry into Haymitch's shirt, burying my face into his chest. I feel his hand gently rubbing the back of my neck, and he doesn't seem to mind as I curl up practically in his lap.

"I've got you Sweetheart" he whispers. "I've got you."

I don't know exactly what I'm saying, but he keeps saying "I know, I know." I scream something and it must've been horrible because when I look up he looks terrified, but not of me…for me. He doesn't bother to mask his pain behind his typical smirk and a snide remark this time. It's there, and I wonder if it's always been there or if he's only just now starting to care.

I hear myself say Peeta's name and guilt visibly floods his face. I feel awful as soon as I watch his eyes flicker away from me. I didn't mean to make him feel any worse than I've already made him feel. All the anger I have harbored for him over the past few weeks has suddenly evaporated. This makes me angry.

I don't want to forgive him. I want to hold the hatred burning in my chest close, keep the flames alive down to the very last ember. I tell myself that whatever trust we'd had between us is now gone and beyond the hope of revival. I tell myself he's a traitor. I tell myself I hate him.

I tell myself I'm a liar.

"I'm sorry" I murmur. His head shoots up and he looks at me in surprise. I bet those were the last things he expected to come out of my mouth. In fact, it's a little hard for me to believe it myself, but I knew it was wrong to place all the blame on him. Even though thousands of reasons that tell me he was wrong still float around in my head, I start to find a thousand more that gravitate towards myself. I begin to open my mouth to tell him but he pushes a hand over my mouth in a very Haymitch kind of way, and for a second I think he's returned back to his normal self, but the pain is still in his face.

"It doesn't matter" he grunts. Suddenly he seems to have aged ten years over night, and I see the exhaustion in his face. "We can spend all day trying to put the blame on you or me, but that doesn't bring him back."

"I know" I say quietly. The truth in his words hurt more than the pain in his eyes. I don't want my eyes to water, but I realize they never stopped.

"Haymitch?"

"Yah Sweetheart?"

I'm almost afraid to ask the question because I know he'll give me the truth.

"Do you think…do you think we'll ever get him back?"

Haymitch is quiet for a while. He doesn't look at me. I wonder if he's going to lie to me again, if he would ever dare to do that again. A part of me hopes he will, to spare me the pain.

He turns back to face me.

"I'll do what I can."

There is a promise in his words, and I study his face closely, searching for any signs of dishonesty. There are none. I still don't know if I can trust him to keep his promises to me.

But at this point, I don't think I have a choice.

"I'm sorry" I say again. I'm not sure if this was to Peeta far away in the Capitol for letting him out of my sight that night or to Haymitch for hating him for doing what he's always done: protect me.

He looks at me again, and his response is not what I expect.

"Me too Sweetheart." He holds me one more time in his embrace and I swear I catch a shimmer in his eyes. "Me too."

When we separate he mutters something along the lines of 13's prohibition law being another plot to wipe him off the map and some kind of abomination against humanity. Though he seems to have returned to his normal self, I can tell as he lays me into the bed that the stiff conversations and the death glares from across the room will be no more.

A piece of rubble falls from above and lands on my face. I shake it off, unafraid. For a moment, I feel as if the poison has been vanquished from my veins, and I wonder if Haymitch possessed some kind of healing touch. I shake this idea from my head. The idea is almost laughable. But I am reminded of his gentle touch, the feeling of his thumb rubbing calming circles into my skin, and the arms that made me feel something I have not felt for years if I have ever felt it at all: safe.

Somehow I know that even if the world does fall to pieces, Haymitch will be there to carry me to safety when I can't fly there myself.

My mentor continues to grumble and I find it funny how he can still do this while everyone else still clings to their bunks as the ground continues to shake. I'm about to make some snarky comment and ask him how long he thinks it'll be till Effie tries to find a way to dye her jumpsuit a bright shade of pink with the berries they give us in our daily meals, but the calming feeling of my protector stroking the side of my head lulls me to sleep before I can say another word.


End file.
